1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and system for testing software programs running on a data processing system. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, apparatus, and computer instructions for testing a software program using mock translation input method editor (MTIME).
2. Description of Related Art
In the field of software testing, various approaches have been taken by current vendors of software programs to provide better test coverage. Support for internationalization becomes an important aspect of software testing to ensure compatibility with different locales, especially if software programs produced are available for users with native languages other than English.
Some software vendors use mock translation tools to perform global verification testing (GVT). A mock translation test simulates English text expansion and replaces or includes selected problematic characters such as character ‘˜’. For example, a tilde, ‘˜’, may be appended to a single-byte language and the Japanese character for 10 (similar to a + sign) is appended for multi-byte languages. Problematic characters are inserted according to a chosen mock language. For example, if German is the chosen mock language, mock German replaces all characters ‘a’, ‘u’, ‘o’, and ‘ss’ with ‘ä’, ‘ü’, ‘ö’, ‘β’. A phase such as “good morning” in German is translated as [˜˜˜˜gööd mörning] in mock German. Mock translation preserves English text as readable by the tester to enable an English user to execute global verification testing (GVT) without understanding other languages. The currently available mock translation tools help solve the problem of field expansion in the graphical user interface, column misalignment, line truncation, hard coded strings, and assembled messages.
However, using the currently available mock translation tools does not solve the problem of validating non-English data handling capabilities of software programs in the backend logic. Currently, an English speaking user has to manually enter non-English data by using the keyboard directly or by cutting and pasting non-English data from other scripts indirectly into the application for testing.
In order to enter non-English data using a keyboard, a user has to be trained on how to enter the problematic characters for different languages. The characters are difficult to learn because each vendor may have different text input methods for entering problematic characters. In addition, the user who uses the latter method needs to know which problematic characters to cut and paste in order to arrive at a mock translation. Alternatively, a tester who may use the native testing language may be employed to perform the testing.
The current approaches do not provide an easy to use solution to allow an English speaking user to generate non-English test data for software testing without a significant learning curve. The traditional approach of inserting non-English data into source code for testing also is not a good solution because source code has to be compiled each time the test data is changed.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer instructions for testing software programs by allowing a user to easily generate mock translation test data for different languages “on the fly” and to allow the user to enter test data for different languages into the software program without a significant learning curve.